Monday, January 17, 2011

Prayer doesn't work. Really. It doesn't!

Intercessory prayer for the sick has been proven several times not to affect the outcome:


http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18277062
CONCLUSIONS: In patients with CFS [chronic fatigue syndrome], distant healing appears to have no statistically significant effect on mental and physical health but the expectation of improvement did improve outcome.


http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17131980
CONCLUSIONS: Distant healing or prayer from a distance does not appear to improve selected clinical outcomes in HIV patients who are on a combination antiretroviral therapy.


http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16569567
CONCLUSIONS: Intercessory prayer itself had no effect on complication-free recovery from CABG [coronary artery bypass graft], but certainty of receiving intercessory prayer was associated with a higher incidence of complications.


http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15715813
INTERPRETATION: Neither masked prayer nor MIT therapy significantly improved clinical outcome after elective catheterisation or percutaneous coronary intervention.


http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11761499
CONCLUSIONS: As delivered in this study, intercessory prayer had no significant effect on medical outcomes after hospitalization in a coronary care unit.


http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11565401
CONCLUSIONS: The effects of intercessory prayer and transpersonal positive visualization cannot be distinguished from the effect of expectancy. Therefore, those 2 interventions do not appear to be effective treatments.

5 comments:

Never Was An Arrow II said...

GOD IS a personal being, not an automatic dispensing machine.

Of cures.

'Course miracles happen, and prayer works: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iK2UOMXU5no

Only 17 years of being cured! ALSO backed by science~

LadyAtheist said...

So Mr Arrow, if you think that a single miracle being backed by science is proof of something, then what of the many studies I posted which included many more people and were also backed by science?

ex-minister1 said...

NWAA2, The video leaves lots of doubts. There is only one doctor and he is pulling down an xray of someone's chest, not an MRI picture which would be expected in this type of cancer. He never says he was the oncologist. As far as I can see that isn't his field. The only thing he says is that it is extraordinary someone with lung cancer would live beyond 15 years. He gives no personal account of interaction with this woman. There is no presentation of her medical records before or after. I cannot believe this because of the lack of scientific presentation. See that is how it is done, these are the questions to ask. Otherwise you believe anything you want to believe. Try to find a better example. This one is superstition.

Never Was An Arrow II said...

Well, Lady Atheist the many studies you posted proved only one thing…the people running the study don't know how to establish a proper control group.

And quantity is not quality.

There are thousands of well attested to miracles in the Catholic Church. Many are backed by science.

People pray for so many things, but very often the answer from God is, "No."

What one thinks one needs, is often a whole lot different that what God will conclude one needs. Life can be unfair for long periods of time, and good health can be quite elusive for most, but these types of vacuums are often the most fertile ground for finding God.

Good health is not a necessity…but finding God is the most necessary thing of all. It's your only real purpose for existing. Fail that, and you've botched everything.

‪ex-minister1‬…the video leaves no doubts, but Thomas, then and now, can just about always find one. TV production only tries to get the general story across in compressed time frames…but there you are looking for absolute validation. This woman's story is well known all across Australia, but of course we have no real proof Australia even exists.

I remember when I lived in Guelph, Ontario CANADA and an atheist staff member from the biological department at the University of Guelph made front page news by validating a saint's miracle.

She was asked to examine two slides and provide an analysis. One slide…human showed cells ravaged by late term cancer, the other, perfectly healthy. When she finalized her report, she was told about the slides, but she had already guessed. A healthy person had come down with terminal cancer. Sad.

No, the department head informed her. A terminally ill cancer patient had suddenly had her fourth stage cancer completely disappear…and you know what?

The Vatican asked us to review those slides. You just confirmed a miracle!

That the Vatican had suddenly, and mysteriously entered her life—completely shocked her! She was floored. PTSD comes to my mind.

'Course, the Vatican's query was the instrument God used to personally enter her life. To say, look again. Check your faulty assumptions.

I remember in the early 80s I was taking home a miracle practically every week.

God is nothing, if not surprising. God cannot be contained, or predicted. And He is beholden to no one. So only a fool lacks the required dose of fear.

Good thing you're an ex-minister. The impoverished theology of most Protestant groups is as disastrous as their Jamnian altered bibles. All of which is only surpassed by the poverty of their prayer lives.

And only Catholicism destroys unbelief through correct theological proclamation, revealed morality, rock-solid logic, and the Christian sacraments.

But other Christians have little time for all that.

Yep, you couldn't even evangelize yourself…how could you be expected to evangelize others?

Right out of the gates, and flat on your face. Evangelized by this world and its poorly constructed, simplistic, inaccurate, anti-faith arguments most recently re-presented by Dawky, Hitchy, and some of the other wind-up toys, from that crowd.

Evangelicals and atheists are cut from the same reductionistic cloth. And both are illiterates when it comes to the Bible. Wow, even the pagans realized, somewhere along the way, that there's one born every minute!

B.R. said...

@Never Was An Arrow II;

Bullshit. You can't give an argument against these studies, so like the typical Catholic Fundy, you simply try to dismiss them out of hand.

The Catholic Church always has and probably always will be working for it's own agenda. Prove that these miracles are backed by science, or bugger off.

"God health is not a necessity...but finding God is the most necessary thing of all."

Bullshit. You couldn't prove that if you had ten thousand years.

"It's your only real purpose for existing."

Again, objectively prove this. Oh wait, you're just another deluded Christians moron, what am I saying?
Making unfounded assumptions and then turning them into mindless dogma is a frequent practice for you.

"Fail that, and you've botched everything."

Only a moron could believe that. There is no proof that god exists, and since the bible has been utterly refuted from top to bottom, you have nothing for this putrid belief.

As for the rest of your worthless drivel--you did not even respond to ex-minister1's criticism of the video you posted, you just vomited a bunch of unproven rhetoric upon this page, as if that actually meant anything. And I love your constant No True Scotsman fallacies; I find them to be truly indicative of their wielder's overall intelligence.

"Evangelicals and atheists are cut from the same reductionistic cloth. Both are illiterates when it comes to the Bible."

It has been shown, over and over and over, that on average, atheists(being ex-Christians for the most part) know much, much more about the Bible than most Christians. Try finding some actual facts in your lifetime instead of relying on hearsay and Christian propaganda.